1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to cooking utensils and more particularly to a sandwich griddle.
2. Prior Art
Many commercial food service establishments are provided with electric or gas-fired flat griddles which consist generally of a base housing having a flat or ribbed heated top surface surrounded on three sides by a raised splash guard. Such griddles are commonly used in the preparation of many heated and cooked foods. However, such flat or one-sided griddles are not advantageously used for some foods which should be griddled simultaneously on both sides. A prime example are some types of sandwiches which are desired to be heated simultaneously from both sides. Moreover, certain types of food items, including some sandwiches, should be heated on both sides well under some slight pressure. Therefore, it has been common in facilities equipped only with single surface griddles to cook sandwiches and the like while applying a weight to the top side and cooking the bottom side and to thereafter invert the sandwich applying weight to the top side. This not only takes considerable period of time and requires fairly constant monitoring, but it produces, in some instances, a less desirable product.
In order to overcome these deficiencies, it has been known to provide special sandwich griddles or grills which have a hinged heated top plate. While such specific sandwich griddles are desirable from a standpoint of two-sided cooking of sandwiches, they are inefficient in cooking single-sided foods such as eggs and the like, since heat is still applied to the top plate. In addition, since the devices are, for all practical purposes, special use devices usable only for two-sided cooking, they represent a significant limited use investment, particularly on the part of small establishments, which, for the most part, are already equipped with the aforementioned flat griddles.
It would, therefore, be an advance in the art to provide an economical two-sided heating sandwich griddle.
It would be a more beneficial advance in the art to provide an attachment for existing flat griddles capable of converting flat griddles, selectively, to two-sided heated sandwich griddles.